This soon came to be called the Thirty Years’ War. But the Peace of Westphalia, which successfully ended the German phase of the conflict, has been much misunderstood. The 1648 settlement is widely ...

The notion that the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, established a system of full sovereignty for the European powers is a tenacious one. It is crucial to have a more ...

I believe that norms set in the Westphalian model, especially in the shape of sovereignty which are the defining features of the current international system, won’t help us resolve collective ...

If no recognizably modern order was present immediately after Westphalia, though, by the 19th century something much more similar to our present-day state system was emerging in Europe. Under this ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on the transport system development via a video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, May 7, 2020.

And with the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s, this U.S.-backed system of rules and organizations appeared to be left as the only blueprint for how to orient relations between states.

This system only truly began to unravel in the nineteenth century, with many of its features persisting well into the twentieth. Viewed through this lens, the so-called “Westphalian order” begins to ...

The Westphalian system made room for diplomacy and coexistence where once there had only been crusades and coercion. It did not erase religious difference, but it acknowledged that violence could ...

Likewise, we are tempted to raise an eyebrow at the news that Kissinger, now 91, has produced another paean to the Westphalian system, his 17th book in 60 years, this one titled simply World Order.

The world may be moving on from the Westphalian international system, but China isn’t playing along. By Ankit Panda. May 22, 2014. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Subscribe for ads-free reading.

Just as the Westphalian ideal has been at times convenient for western powers and inconvenient (and ignored) at other times—a system of “organized hypocrisy” in Krasner’s own words—so ...